Mutterings of a Mad Woman

Marmota Monax is coming along slowly. Though I don't plan on having his body be visible, he's gotten a sloppy clay covering over his torso. I've been experimenting with a new clay recipe and thought this was a safe opportunity to test it.

When you start a business, it's important to know your target audience and the positioning of the product you're selling (a basic decision of who it's for, what it does, and how to appeal to your target group). With this in mind, I think the folks over at Casket Furniture need to work on their selling angle. Or at the very least, reorganize their website. I get the feeling they didn't want to miss out on either crowd - people mourning a loss and people who look at coffins as entertainment.

For example, the second menu item on their website after 'Casket Furniture' is 'Casket Gaming' where you can find items like this Coffin Poker Table.

Are you now in a fun and fancy free mood? Totally on board with how coffins aren't just for funerals? Goooood! Because the third menu item is 'Casket Plans' where we switch gears from fun and games. Suddenly the messages take on a sombre tone to discuss how hard it is to lose a loved one, and the products aren't for fun, but for eternal peace.

Recently I posted a bone scan of myself I'd had taken a while ago. I'd remembered I had it because I was getting x-rays done. Turns out the x-rays were useless to the doctor, but they're a welcome addition to my growing collection (nice profile, don't you think?).

It's all rather fitting, since there's been a blogging frenzy this week covering an x-ray lamp made by Sture Pallarp (shown right), and I'm thinking of making my own sometime.

While I've seen 'how-to's online that get people to attach their x-rays to existing paper lampshades, I think I'll pick up a plastic shade made for DIY stained glass projects.

I'm sure most of us can remember a time in childhood when our parents nudged us out the door to play, even though something - be it the local bully or the crazy neighbour's dog that's always loose - was waiting for us. I can remember many a battle taking place at the local park. Though I will admit, I never had to fight zombies (not real ones, anyway).

While there are many things to legitimately fear in the world, I find that human beings have a tendency to heighten these fears to the point where we lose scope of what we should actually be afraid of; what the original source of fear was, and how to act in order to protect ourselves. If you lose sight of what the original source was, then any action you take to prevent it from happening again is fairly useless.

I just read a news story from last October about a town in Pennsylvania who, after 16 years, lifted a ban on trick or treating after dark. The ban was put in place in October of 1992, after an 11-year-old girl, Shauna Howe, was abducted and murdered by two men.

Death is tragic. Murder of children is devastating. The people who commit these acts are the source of fear, and have nothing to do with a holiday.

I decided to do a bit of digging on the original story, and what I found illustrates my point of displacing fear.

The girl wasn't taken on Halloween. She was actually attacked on October 27th, while walking home from a girl scout Halloween party. On her own.

You may have seen his work on the Cartoon Network or through Warner Brothers. If you haven't, come sit by me and get to know Wisconsin-born Aaron Blecha.

It's the editorial work he's done while living in London that caught my eye (for example, the images posted below).

While I enjoy animated shows, there's something that changes just beneath the surface of a cartoon when you take the same animation artist and apply their skill in a different medium for an older audience: the corners are a little darker; the characters are a little edgier; there is a commentary to the unspoken story.

Dubbax3 is the username behind the work over at Rotting Hills: Shea Halloween. He does beautiful sculptural art and some gruesome corpses, along with cuter looking creepers.

Besides having obvious talent, I think the reason his pieces are so wonderful is because of the attention to detail regardless of scale; you see it in his small sculptures and you see it in his large corpses/zombies. I especially like the look of the hands in the image below.

Stumbled across some wonderfully disturbing photographs of Halloween celebrators from the early 1900's. I've posted 3 of my favourites, but encourage you to browse the entire set.

There are additional images from the WIRED magazine article, where they interviewed the the man behind the collection:

...people back then were probably on a more intimate level with death — and that would have affected the way they celebrated Halloween...I am really fascinated by how these photographs of people dressed in primitive, homemade costumes and memorialized in faded, black-and-white photos often seem to have a real sinister aspect to them. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but to me Halloween a century ago looks much scarier than it does now in digitalized color